DRINKING WATER
Unlocking The Flow: The Transformative Value Of Meter Data Management For Water Utilities
MDM systems transform raw meter data into actionable intelligence, enhancing operational efficiency, driving proactive leak detection, improving billing accuracy, and supporting vital water conservation initiatives.
DRINKING WATER CASE STUDIES AND WHITE PAPERS
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Indirect Potable Reuse With UV-Oxidation - Big Spring, Texas
In an effort to reduce reliance on dwindling surface and groundwater supplies in Texas, the Colorado River Municipal Water District constructed a new Raw Water Production Facility in Big Spring.
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UF/RO System Treating Mine-Influenced Water To Remove Selenium
A Phosphorus mine in Wyoming needed to treat high selenium concentrations leaching into the surface water. Read the full case study to learn how Toray projected to save the plant energy costs for years.
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Sniffing For Leaks: Gas Leak Detection Saves A Colorado Utility Thousands
A small water district in Breckenridge, CO, was experiencing notably high water loss from November of 2015 through April of 2016. The apparent discrepancies in usage versus production led the utility to seek out the source(s) of the water loss.
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Treating 1,4-Dioxane Using Advanced Oxidation Processes
What is 1,4-dioxane, and why is it an issue? Read this article to learn more about this byproduct and how it can be treated.
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Clearing Up Misconceptions About Turbidimeter Performance And Calibration
There is little doubt about the importance of taking turbidity readings as part of drinking water treatment. However, there are certain misperceptions about the associated requirements and procedures needed to confirm the validity of those readings.
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A Better Approach To Iron And Manganese Removal
The aesthetic impact of iron and manganese on finished water — altering its color, odor, and/or taste — is the top driver of municipal utility customer complaints.
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Preparing For “The Big One” – Protecting The Nation's Water Infrastructure
What can be done to minimize potential losses from an earthquake? One solution is earthquake-resistant water infrastructure. AMERICAN introduced its Earthquake Joint System in 2015. In 2016, a study by Cornell found the system can withstand ground ruptures in excess of those experienced during some of the world’s most catastrophic earthquakes.
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How Water Utilities Can Transform Fragmented Data Into A Unified Asset For Operational Excellence
Water utilities stand at the intersection of legacy infrastructure and digital innovation. As demand grows and environmental pressures mount, utilities face the challenge of transitioning from siloed, fragmented data systems to cohesive platforms that unlock the full potential of digital transformation.
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How WWTPs Can Get Greener Grass On The Other Side Of The IIoT
The next big thing is here and it’s the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). To understand how the IIoT applies to a wastewater treatment plant, look no further than your front yard.
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Calcium Hypochlorite Feeder Selected As Primary Solution For Municipal Water Treatment Plants
Long Beach Township is the largest town on Long Beach Island, New Jersey. With 18 miles of beaches, the town is a major tourist destination. Population exploded during the summer months from approximately 3,000 to over 100,000. This can be a challenge for the town's drinking water facilities, with demand increasing exponentially during the tourist season.
DRINKING WATER APPLICATION NOTES
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Waterworks Joints 10110/30/2025
There are many different joints that can be found on waterworks pipeline components. This paper focuses on the three most common joints.
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Active Energy Control – Energy Reductions Of Up To 10% Above Standard Drives4/1/2017
Energy costs continue to increase. At the same time, there is increased pressure to reduce utility bills without sacrificing operations or comfort.
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Dosing Of Sodium Hypochlorite Solution For Drinking Water Disinfection9/22/2022
A water purveyor was in urgent need of a chemically resistant flow instrumentation with a long life of service that allowed reliable and long-term stable dosing of the sodium hypochlorite solution.
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Secret To Disinfection Monitoring For High Chlorine Residual Wastewater Applications8/2/2015
Some wastewater applications require chlorine residuals greater than can be effectively monitored using DPD due to the oxidation of the Wurster dye to a colorless Imine. Such applications include industrial wastewater processes that inherently have a high chlorine demand thereby requiring a more robust monitoring method.
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A New Way Of Designing With Reverse Osmosis Membranes7/23/2015
Process design in water treatment is historically confined to proprietary or user-defined spreadsheets on a unit operation basis, with users manually adding results from each unit process upstream into the next operation.
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Temperature Monitoring For Water Treatment4/29/2024
Learn how to ensure compliance, monitor water temperature diligently, and implement robust measures to mitigate regulatory penalties.
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Take Control Of Your Water Distribution Network With Digitalization And Remote Monitoring5/19/2022
Any process plant constantly generates a high volume of status data. Today, this data can be extracted from the plant, stored, analyzed, and prepared to meet operator needs and lower marginal costs.
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Why Should We Care About NSF/ANSI 61 Certification?3/17/2021
According to National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), it's a set of standards relating to water treatment and establishes criteria for the control of equipment that comes in contact with either potable water or products that support the production of water.
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Application Note: Desalination Plants: YSI Instruments Monitor Flow & Water Quality At Multiple Stages2/3/2011Desalination is the process of removing salt from sea water or brackish river or groundwater to make potable water. By YSI
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Bringing Efficiency And New Confidence To BOD₅ Analysis2/4/2013
Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) analysis is the test everyone loves to hate—and for compelling reasons.
LATEST INSIGHTS ON DRINKING WATER
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In this Q&A, Dr. Elke Süss of Metrohm addresses the urgent need for haloacetic acid testing in response to “one of the most significant updates to EU drinking water monitoring in recent years.”
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Amazon and Xylem partner to tackle Mexico’s leaking water systems as the country balances water scarcity and a growing tech sector.
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Water scarcity is increasingly impacting sectors from agriculture and energy to urban planning and high-tech manufacturing. Recently, industry leaders gathered to explore how new technologies and complex industrial demands are forcing a fundamental rethinking of water infrastructure.
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Nobel-winning molecular materials are poised to reinvent purification, desalination, and reuse.
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Researchers have developed polyimide-based membranes for membrane distillation (MD) that overcome three persistent issues in membranes for water treatment and gas separations: the need for pore-forming chemicals that prevent recycling, performance degradation due to pore wetting and fouling, and the inherent trade-off between high water flux and selectivity.
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Small municipalities and industrial sites face constant pressure: deliver safe, stable water with limited resources and tight deadlines. Traditional on-site construction can stretch project schedules by months and introduce quality and cost risks. By shifting much of the fabrication off-site, these risks are dramatically reduced.
ABOUT DRINKING WATER
In most developed countries, drinking water is regulated to ensure that it meets drinking water quality standards. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administers these standards under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).
Drinking water considerations can be divided into three core areas of concern:
- Source water for a community’s drinking water supply
- Drinking water treatment of source water
- Distribution of treated drinking water to consumers
Drinking Water Sources
Source water access is imperative to human survival. Sources may include groundwater from aquifers, surface water from rivers and streams and seawater through a desalination process. Direct or indirect water reuse is also growing in popularity in communities with limited access to sources of traditional surface or groundwater.
Source water scarcity is a growing concern as populations grow and move to warmer, less aqueous climates; climatic changes take place and industrial and agricultural processes compete with the public’s need for water. The scarcity of water supply and water conservation are major focuses of the American Water Works Association.
Drinking Water Treatment
Drinking Water Treatment involves the removal of pathogens and other contaminants from source water in order to make it safe for humans to consume. Treatment of public drinking water is mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. Common examples of contaminants that need to be treated and removed from water before it is considered potable are microorganisms, disinfectants, disinfection byproducts, inorganic chemicals, organic chemicals and radionuclides.
There are a variety of technologies and processes that can be used for contaminant removal and the removal of pathogens to decontaminate or treat water in a drinking water treatment plant before the clean water is pumped into the water distribution system for consumption.
The first stage in treating drinking water is often called pretreatment and involves screens to remove large debris and objects from the water supply. Aeration can also be used in the pretreatment phase. By mixing air and water, unwanted gases and minerals are removed and the water improves in color, taste and odor.
The second stage in the drinking water treatment process involves coagulation and flocculation. A coagulating agent is added to the water which causes suspended particles to stick together into clumps of material called floc. In sedimentation basins, the heavier floc separates from the water supply and sinks to form sludge, allowing the less turbid water to continue through the process.
During the filtration stage, smaller particles not removed by flocculation are removed from the treated water by running the water through a series of filters. Filter media can include sand, granulated carbon or manufactured membranes. Filtration using reverse osmosis membranes is a critical component of removing salt particles where desalination is being used to treat brackish water or seawater into drinking water.
Following filtration, the water is disinfected to kill or disable any microbes or viruses that could make the consumer sick. The most traditional disinfection method for treating drinking water uses chlorine or chloramines. However, new drinking water disinfection methods are constantly coming to market. Two disinfection methods that have been gaining traction use ozone and ultra-violet (UV) light to disinfect the water supply.
Drinking Water Distribution
Drinking water distribution involves the management of flow of the treated water to the consumer. By some estimates, up to 30% of treated water fails to reach the consumer. This water, often called non-revenue water, escapes from the distribution system through leaks in pipelines and joints, and in extreme cases through water main breaks.
A public water authority manages drinking water distribution through a network of pipes, pumps and valves and monitors that flow using flow, level and pressure measurement sensors and equipment.
Water meters and metering systems such as automatic meter reading (AMR) and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) allows a water utility to assess a consumer’s water use and charge them for the correct amount of water they have consumed.